1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mail delivery server for transmitting electronic mail to a receiver side mail delivery server administering mail addresses entered in a destination column of a received electronic mail, a method therefor, and a mail delivery program storage medium storing a mail delivery program, executed in an information processing device for executing programs, for causing the information processing device to operate as a mail delivery server, and to.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the increasing spread of the Internet, use of electronic mail, which is one function of the Internet, has become increasingly popular.
It is common practice for the destination of electronic mail messages to be designated using an internet mail address having the format nnn@domain.com. However, in the case of this electronic mail system, it is necessary for all users to have an internet mail address, and it is not possible to use e-mail as a means of communication for people who do not use the Internet. Also, despite the fact that use of the Internet is becoming widespread, there are still a lot of people who do not use the Internet.
In order to address these points, a technique has been considered where it is permitted to enter a facsimile (fax) or telephone number in the destination field of the electronic mail, and that electronic mail is converted to fax information or voice information by the mail delivery server that receives that electronic mail, and the information is sent to the destination indicated by the fax number or telephone number.
However, since there is not just one mail delivery server but numerous mail servers on the Internet, the above-proposed technique will suffer from the following problems unless it is applied to absolutely all mail delivery servers on the Internet. Specifically, in the case where a mail recipient receiving an electronic mail containing both a mail address and a fax number in the electronic mail destination field carries out a broadcast transmission of electronic mail to all people in the destination field of that email, if a recipient side mail delivery server used by the mail recipient does not handle processing of fax number etc, processing at the mail delivery server receiving the electronic mail broadcast transmitted from that recipient will return an error for the fax number part, and there is a problem that the electronic mail will not be processed correctly.
Alternatively, in the case where a mail message is delivered after a fax number etc. is deleted by the mail delivery server at the mail sender side capable of carrying out processing for the fax number etc. in order to prevent the above described error from occurring, there is a problem that it will not be possible to include anyone who receives the information using a fax in a broadcast reply.
A technique for including a fax number or the like within an internet type mail address and then performing fax transmission at a server for administering that mail address is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei. 11-154969.
With this technique, it is possible to receive electronic mail at a server for carrying out transmission of a fax number etc. and to transmit the fax etc., even if another server does not have the capability to perform processing of a fax number or the like.
However, in this case, a person wishing to receive the electronic information by fax etc., and not by electronic mail, or a person wishing to deliver information by fax etc., must also subscribe to a system providing a service for transmitting electronic mail information by fax etc., as well as subscribing to an electronic mail system, and a sender of mail performing transmission that includes transmission to a fax etc. must ensure that messages are transmitted not with the fax number simply entered in the destination but prepared in a correct mail address format, and the technique proposed in the above publication does not describe anything pertaining to realistically resolving the above problems.